7/28, West Walker river trail to just before Sonora Pass, Mile 1018
Aaron Doss
east to west. Rich brown soil, and light volcanic stones underfoot.
As we get closer to Sonora pass we realize that we could get off the
trail there, it's an interesting prospect. At this point we are
fairly sure we are getting off it's just a question of were. It's
been such a great hike these last few weeks it would be good to stop
on a good note instead of waiting to be miserable. So shall we hike
50 miles to Tahoe or get off before Tahoe?
We descended the steep snowfields gracing the crest near Sonora. I
can understand why the guidebook describes these slopes as dangerous
and "a fall could be fatal". However the guidebook describes this
area when the typical thruhiker comes through, we are later than
typical, most of the snow is gone and there are no "fatal" snowfields.
We heard that Detour had some problems here when he jumped ahead of
us, I could totally imagine it, he hates snow, any amount of snow!
So we descended the not so scary snowfields down to Sonora pass but
decided to camp just before the pass at a creek. The databook did not
say there was water at the pass.. I think Zack wanted to continue on
another mile or so, our hiking goals are starting to diverge. Now
that we are starting to get out of the Sierras Zack feels the pressure
to continue on and put in the miles, while we feel that the pressure
to move on is subsiding.
We didn't feel the urge to hang our food, so we didn't. Now that we
are out of the park, and the bears are not protected, they should be
fairly afraid of humans.
Aaron